Ten years after Croatia applied for EU membership, it will join the European Union on July 1st. This is a big step for a country which emerged from a bloody war with its neighbours in 1995.

In its recently published country-specific recommendations 2013 for Croatia, the European Commission forecasts that the Croatian economy will contract by 1 % in 2013 on the back of continuing bank deleveraging and unfavourable developments in the labour market.

Leading EU affairs journalist Grégoire Lory looks at the impact of Croatia’s accession to the EU. Will it help the country to recover? How will its balkan neighbors be affected by this? He also underlines what could be the impact of a 28th Member State on the EU.